From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 00:55:37 BST
Rick, Jon and all:
Jon said:
"Without Intellect, there are no levels. The inorganic level
includes both "physical matter" and what we think and feel about it, and the
same goes for the biological levels." and "Throwing in Intellect introduces
the problem of recursion that keeps cropping up in these discussions."
Rick replied:
In LILA (ch12 p172) Pirsig claims that if you construct an encyclopedia of
four topics- Inorganic, Biological, Social and Intellectual- nothing is left
out (except DQ). It would seem to me that if the Intellectual level is left
out entirely, that encyclopedia would be incomplete as it would contain no
room for our 'ideas'.
dmb says:
Nobody'll be surprized to learn that I'm with Rick on this point. The four
levels leave nothing out, or at least this is what Pirsig claims. And so the
intellectual level isn't just something "thrown in" that causes problems,
but a major component of the MOQ's most basic architecture. But in the
chapter that makes the claim about the exhaustive nature of this
classification system, directly follows with the main theme of the chapter,
which is the independence of the four levels...
"This classification of patterns is not very original, but the MOQ allows an
assertion about them that is unusual. It says they are not continuous. They
are discrete. They have very little to do with one another. Although each
higher level is built on a lower one it is not an extension of that lower
level. Quite the contrary. The higher level can often be seen to be in
opposition to the lower level, dominating it, controlling it where possible
for its own purposes."
dmb continues:
Let's see. I think Jon has cooked up a different MOQ. In his recipe, the 4th
level is cut into three parts and evenly distributed to the other levels,
where it is then be mixed until smooth. (To avoid lumps of recursion.) Among
the many problems with this dish, I think this leaves out too many things,
as Rick points out, AND just as importantly, it merges things where Pirsig
wants them to be discrete.
Burp. Oh, Pardon me.
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